It looks like a long road lies ahead in the high-stakes legal battle between Northrop Grumman Corp. and the U.S. Postal Service over a botched automation project worth more than $900 million.

In a joint filing last week, lawyers for the two sides laid out their timetable for conducting the legal fact-finding process known as discovery. Their deadline for wrapping it up (and yes, you are reading this right): Jan. 15, 2016. Along the way, each side may conduct up to 50 depositions a piece, and that doesn’t include expert testimony.

As Federal Times has previously reported, the Northrop Grumman suit filed last May accuses the Postal Service of violating the terms of the 2007 contract intended to improve automated handling of flats. Not surprisingly, USPS officials tell the story a little differently. We won’t rehash all the arguments here, but suffice it to say that each side says the other owes it lots of money.